doodledee

What a turbulent weekend of concerts.

On Saturday night, Libby and I headed over to the 400 bar to see the flops bring the acoustic noise. For some reason this show stayed under the radar, which translated into a nice small crowd instead of the usual butts-to-nuts scene. That was a treat, as was the music, which included a couple of new songs (3?) and a cover of The Chantels 'Maybe' that I'd never heard *anyone* do before. The remainder was the usual Matt Wilson / Trip Shakespeare cover-fest. All in all, plenty solid, though I sometimes wish they would stay with the uptempo stuff a little more.

Then tonight, we headed over to the hell hole that is River's Edge Amphitheater to see Jack Johnson and Ben Harper play. This one didn't go so well. The show was scheduled to start at 6. Because it was raining all day, instead of going over at 4 and tailgating or something, we tried to time it all out perfectly. My theory went like this: based on a lifetime of attending concerts and having never seen one start on time, I figured the no-name opener would start around 6:30. Figure they would play for 40 minutes, followed by a 20 minute set break. Then Ben Harper would come out and play for maybe 90 minutes. Finally, after another 20 minute setbreak, Jack Johnson would take the stage around 8:45 or so. Conclusion: if we show up at 7:30, we're golden.

Bzzzzz!

We left our place at 6. We got stuck in a nightmare of traffic as we got close to the venue, which - because we made such excellent time the rest of the way - maybe set us back 15 minutes. We park and start the wet-pasture death march to the gate, figuring at worst we missed the very beginning of Ben Harper's set.

On the way there, one of the doofs behind us calls his buddy on his cellphone. (His buddy is already inside.) "Where are you?" "What's it like in there?" "Holy shit, Jack is already done?!"

Hold up, what now?

At first I thought he was joking, so I asked just to be sure. Yep, Jack was already off the stage. Holy crap. It was only 7:40. I looked around at the [literally] hundreds and hundreds of other people walking with us and realized that we all just got crapped on. Time to think.

We head to the gate. I ask some chick what the deal is. She says that Jack is already done. She's pissed. She's been waiting for her friend since 6:30 and she had missed Jack's whole set. Damn. Sucks to be her.

There are still tons of people walking up. Some of them are pretty upset. I spotted several classic teenage girl breakdowns as they found out the status of the show. In fact, if I were to write a poem describing the scene, I think I'd call it 'Beers and Tears in Wisconsin'. It would most likely be A-B-A-B.

Oddly, even with the show 2/3 over, the line at the ticket tent was 20 deep. I quickly checked with Libby and we both agreed that it wasn't worth fighting the crowd just to see Ben Harper, so I scampered off holding our two tickets in the air. Here fishy, fishy, fishy.

Three minutes later I'd recovered my money and we were headed home - dumfounded and speechless. I've gone over the whole thing in my head a couple of times and it just doesn't make sense. Oh, well.

All I know is that Wilco's show this Friday is gonna kick hella-ass all over some stupid rainy concert in Wisconsin. Back in my old neighborhood, indeed.